outreach
How to Find Freight Forwarder Contacts in Russia by OKVED Code
Learn how to pull verified freight forwarder contacts in Russia by OKVED code and turn phone numbers into Telegram usernames for outreach.
You've got a logistics product or service that's perfect for Russian freight forwarders. But every lead source you try gives you a company name, a generic info@ email that nobody checks, and nothing else. You need the actual decision-maker — and you need to message them somewhere they'll actually reply.
There's no LinkedIn equivalent in Russia and the CIS. Decision-maker data lives in scattered places: government business registries, Telegram, and directory sites. If you don't know how to connect those dots, you're stuck cold-calling switchboards and hoping someone transfers you to the right person.
What OKVED Code Should You Search for Freight Forwarders?
Freight forwarding and cargo handling companies in Russia are registered under OKVED code 52.29 ("Deyatelnost vspomogatelnaya, svyazannaya s perevozkami" — activities of other auxiliary transportation, which covers freight forwarding). Related codes worth pulling alongside it include 49.41 (road freight transport) and 52.10 (warehousing and storage). Filtering a business registry by these three codes gets you a company list that's actually relevant instead of a mix of unrelated logistics-adjacent businesses.
How Do You Turn an OKVED Filter Into a Contact List?
A registry filter gets you company names, legal entity numbers, and revenue bands. It does not get you a person's phone number or Telegram handle — that's the part everyone gets stuck on. The fix is a six-step workflow that chains a business-data provider to CRMChat's contact-lookup tools through an AI assistant, so the whole thing runs as one sequence instead of manual lookups.
Access a business data provider. Use a registry service like DataNewton to filter Russian companies by OKVED code (52.29, 49.41, 52.10) and revenue range. Grab an API key from their documentation.
Connect your AI assistant to DataNewton. Give Claude or ChatGPT the API key so it can query the registry directly instead of you exporting spreadsheets by hand.
Connect your AI assistant to CRMChat. Grab your CRMChat API key from Settings → API Keys, and give it to the assistant so it can drive CRMChat's contact-lookup bot.
Instruct the AI to find the decision-maker. For each freight forwarding company from step 1, the assistant runs a lookup sequence through CRMChat's contact-lookup bot to identify the founder or general director.
Retrieve the phone number. The bot returns the decision-maker's phone number tied to the company registry record.
Convert phone to Telegram username. CRMChat's contact-lookup tools resolve phone numbers into Telegram usernames, which is the format you actually need for outreach — nobody answers a cold call from a landline number.
CRMChat automates the phone-to-Telegram resolution step through @crmchatcontactbot, driven by the AI assistant, so you're not manually checking each number one at a time. The end result is a CSV of freight forwarder decision-makers with names, companies, and working Telegram usernames — ready to load into an outreach sequence.
Should You Use Group Parsing Instead?
Group parsing — pulling members from Telegram logistics and cargo groups — is a valid secondary tactic, but it's not a replacement for the registry-based method above. Parsing gets you volume and Telegram-native people who are already active in the space, but you can't filter by OKVED code, revenue, or company size. You get whoever happened to join the group, decision-maker or not.
Use the registry workflow first to build your core target list of verified freight forwarding decision-makers. Then use group parsing as a supplement — CRMChat's Telegram list-building approach for customs brokers works the same way for freight forwarders since both sit in adjacent OKVED codes and often overlap on the same Telegram channels.
What Should You Verify Before Reaching Out?
An OKVED code tells you a company is registered for freight forwarding activity — it doesn't tell you if they're still operating, how big their fleet is, or whether they're licensed. Before you burn outreach credits on a list, run a quick sanity check:
Check revenue band. DataNewton filters let you exclude shell companies with near-zero reported revenue.
Confirm active status. Registries flag liquidated or inactive entities — filter those out before import.
Cross-reference fleet size for carriers you'll actually ship with. If you're partnering rather than just selling software, verify fleet size before outreach so you're not pitching a two-truck operation as a national partner.
Check operating licenses for trucking-adjacent partners. If your freight forwarder list overlaps with carriers, verify the operating license first.
How Do You Message a Freight Forwarder List on Telegram?
Once you have verified Telegram usernames, import them into an outreach sequence rather than messaging one by one. CRMChat lets you upload a CSV of contacts and run a personalized sequence at scale, tracking replies automatically as CRM leads. Since you're cold-messaging a fresh list of Telegram accounts, warm up your sending account first — a burst of first-contact messages to unknown users is exactly the pattern Telegram flags. Check CRMChat's Telegram account warmup guide before you launch the sequence.
If you're expanding this same workflow to other B2B verticals in Russia, the underlying method doesn't change — only the OKVED code does. The same registry-to-CRMChat pipeline works for finding decision-makers at manufacturing plants or any other industry where LinkedIn simply doesn't exist as an option.
What's the Fastest Way to Get Started?
Don't try to build the perfect list on day one. Pull a small batch — 50 to 100 companies under one OKVED code — run it through the full workflow, and see what your reply rate looks like before scaling up. Check CRMChat's Help Center for the full contact-lookup setup, and the CRMChat API docs if you want to script the whole pipeline instead of prompting an AI assistant manually each time.
